Lethal Injection

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT LETHAL INJECTION - PAGE 4

A 25-year-old man was executed by lethal injection Wednesday for the torture and slaying of a teenager who was forced to drink hydrochloric acid during a robbery of his home. It was the state's first execution in 60 years. Elijah Page gave up his appeals and asked to die for the 2000 murder of Chester Allan Poage, 19. Page died at 10:11 p.m. from a lethal injection administered at the South Dakota State Penitentiary. ---------- Items compiled from Tribune news services.

Texas executed a pair of convicted killers by lethal injection Tuesday morning in the state's first multiple execution since 1951. Clifton Russell, 33, was pronounced dead about 8 minutes after receiving a fatal intravenous dose of chemicals, a prison spokesman said. An hour and 20 minutes later, Willie Williams, 38, was pronounced dead, after he was administered a lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville, about 90 miles north of Houston. With Tuesday's double execution, Texas joined Arkansas as the only state to conduct a multiple execution since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976.

Prosecutors moved Monday to set new execution dates for three Death Row inmates, hours after the Supreme Court lifted a reprieve it granted last fall so it could consider the constitutionality of lethal injection. The court had blocked the executions of murderers Thomas Arthur of Alabama, Earl Berry of Mississippi and Carlton Turner of Texas while it considered a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection procedures. Upheld: The high court ruled 7-2 last week that the procedures are not cruel, and the justices' last-minute orders temporarily sparing the three inmates automatically expired when the justices denied their appeals.

Condemned serial murderer John Wayne Gacy moved closer to execution as his lawyers lost on three legal fronts Friday. With only three days before Gacy is scheduled to die of a lethal injection, his lawyers said they will next try to win a delay from the federal appeals court in Chicago in a filing on Saturday. The convicted killer of 33 men and boys, whose execution is set for 12:01 a.m. Tuesday in Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, is running out of options after three courts rebuffed efforts on Friday.

11. Blond ambition: A Connecticut woman says her social life was shattered by L'Oreal after she accidentally dyed her hair brown with one of the company's products. Charlotte Feeney of Stratford said she suffers headaches, anxiety and has to wear hats most of the time because of a dye job that permanently doomed her to a less blonde hue. A Connecticut judge disagreed with the claims in the 2005 lawsuit, and dismissed it on Monday. 12. Obesity problem: An Ohio death row inmate claims prison food is part of the reason he is too fat to be executed humanely.

A murderer who would have become the nation's first executed inmate in months won a reprieve Thursday from the U.S. Supreme Court a little more than an hour before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection. James Harvey Callahan was granted a stay, Holman prison warden Grantt Culliver told officers on Death Row. The court's brief order did not say why. It would have been the nation's first execution since September, when the high court agreed to consider whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

Convicted killer Charles Walker does not want to participate in a class-action suit challenging the equipment and procedures the state plans to use for his scheduled execution next month, his lawyer said Wednesday. Lawyer William Kunkle Jr. also said Walker has reviewed the state's procedures for execution by lethal injection and has no objections to them. Walker is scheduled to die shortly after midnight on Sept. 12 at Stateville Correctional Center, near Joliet. Lawyers for two inmates on death row in Illinois filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, contending the reliability of the lethal injection machine in doubt and that the state's procedures for an execution are inadequate and unconstitutional.

A Chinese tycoon once worth more than $360 million has been executed by lethal injection for having a man who tried to blackmail him killed, a court statement and news reports said Saturday. Yuan Baojing and two accomplices were put to death by lethal injection Friday after a court upheld a death sentence handed down last year. Yuan appeared "very agitated" as he was escorted out of court and was executed about 15 minutes later, the paper said. Yuan, 40, was convicted last year of hiring a hit man in a failed plot to kill a business partner who had caused Yuan's company to lose $11 million in futures trading, according to earlier news reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who had been scheduled to die Tuesday for killing a woman in 1991 and scattering her remains across two states. Inmate Kenneth Biros -- and the family of the victim, Tami Engstrom--had waited for the decision more than six hours past his scheduled execution time at Ohio's death house. The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with two lower courts that delayed the execution so Biros could continue arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

Lawmakers agreed Thursday to change the way the state puts condemned prisoners to death, ending a 76-year reliance on the electric chair. On a 102-5 vote, the Florida House of Representatives agreed to switch to lethal injection, the method used by the vast majority of states that permit the death penalty. Earlier, the Florida Senate passed the measure 37-0. Under the bill, Death Row inmates will be executed by lethal injection unless they request electrocution. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments next month over whether Florida's use of the electrocution violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.